Ok,
a lot of people seem to use photmetric lights with Erco (spell that right?) and vray…
are there any tutorials/pointers on how to use these three together?? …
I’m looking more for starting pointers and any potential problems that this method can have, that I should watch out for…I never really used photometric lights in viz/max.
your help would be greatly appreciated,
PS this is for arch viz renderings.
Paul.
hi cocolas
I wrote a very quick Tutorial on how to do this.
heres the link
http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3647
hope it is of some help.
Natty
yeah!!..I remmeber something like that, but i couldn’t find it…
thanks natty!!! 
paul.
i’v found that the photometric lights take an obscene amount of time to compute the ir map. . .is there a way to use these lights that will cut down on the time :?:
Does this work with VRAY free?
I tried the file and got no light from the setup it contained.
I wonder why that is…anybody??
paul.
Change the noise threshold in the QMC sampler to something like 0.01, it helps a little
Gonçalo
I’ve heard photometric lights should take up less time to render due to the fact that they all have an inverse square amount of light assigned to them. In other words- they don’t light up a scene to inifinity.
Is that true? Btw, I have the worst time using them. I throw them into a scene- and it renders black. Am I forced to use the exposure settings for Photometrics?
-juju
not that I’ve found. i rendered two idendical scenes last night, rendered at 560x320, on identical computers, one with vray area lights and the other photometric lights. I’m not sure of the actual render time because the vray light render had an error i need to promt out of this a.m., but the ir map was complete and was in the middle of rendering when I returned.
The model with the photometric lights was still in it’s first irmap pass. These were two identical models,
DAMN!!! I didn’t think it took THAT much longer…
it seems that some IES files are worse than others. using an IES for a basic can light or directional spotlight works without too much of an increase in calc time. but, when i dropped an IES file in for a linear cove type light - the calc time for the irmap went through the roof!
wuts wrong
i downloaded the file and rendered it, but its just black. something i didnt turn on?
could be a units issue.
Like Proces2 said…when you open the file choose inherit files units.
er..
that was never asked when i open it in max…
but sweeeettttttttt…its working now! thanks for ur help
if you did a drag-and-drop from the Erco site through the asset browser, then it won’t prompt you. if the units for your scene (customize/units setup) are set to inches, then make sure to download the US version of the erco light.
IES lights work the same as omni lights, they are (simplistic) an array of spotlights. An omni light is actually something like 8 spotlights, this is why they take so much more time to render. I believe IES does a similar thing with the IES file designating falloff for each light in the array.
I’ve had issues like that constantly. Whenever I use photmetric lights when I render it’s black. I discovered that I have to go into environment settings and set up exposure (drag down the list) in order to get any light working. Is this the normal process?
-juju
under CUSTOMIZE/Units Setup?System Units Setup/
check ‘respect system units in files’
cuz erco uses metric system
what is you scale ??